Sergeant Ackley tried to talk, but his first few words were incoherent. After a moment, he managed to control himself enough to say: “We caught Mainwaring’s chauffeur. He had a cane with two imitation emeralds in it.”
“Did he, indeed?” Lester Leith said. “Do you know, sergeant, I gave him that cane.”
“So I gather.”
“Yes,” Lester Leith said, “I gave it to him. I thought that perhaps Mr. Mainwaring might be interested in it.”
“And why did you think Mainwaring might be interested in it?”
“Oh, just as a curiosity,” Leith said. “I had two of them, and I really had use only for one, you know. And Mainwaring’s a traveler, an explorer who—”
“Where’s the other one?” Ackley interrupted.
“Over there in the corner, I believe,” Leith said unconcernedly. “Would you like it, sergeant? I’ll give it to you as a souvenir of your visit. I had some idea for a while that a person might be able to work out a solution — and, mind you, sergeant, I mean a purely academic solution — of a crime by using these canes. But I find that I was in error, sergeant. So many times one makes mistakes, or do you find that to be true in your case, sergeant?”
“Tut, tut, sergeant, don’t answer, because I can see it’s going to embarrass you. I can realize that the professional officer doesn’t make the errors that a rank amateur would, yet I see that I’ve embarrassed you by asking the question.”
“Anyway, sergeant, I decided there was a flaw in my reasoning so I decided to get rid of the canes. I gave one to Mr. Mainwaring, thinking he might like it — that is, I left it with his chauffeur — and I’m giving you this other one.”
Sergeant Ackley said: “Like hell you made a mistake. You solved that Mainwaring robbery.”
“Robbery!” Lester Leith asked. “Surely sergeant, you must be mistaken. It was the killing of a monkey, wasn’t it? The malicious, premeditated killing of a harmless pet. I felt very much incensed about it myself, sergeant.”
“You felt incensed enough so you went out and grabbed the emeralds,” Sergeant Ackley charged.
“What emeralds?”
“You know very well what emeralds — the two that were in the monkey’s stomach, the two that the chauffeur stole.”
“Did the chauffeur tell you that he stole any emeralds?” Lester Leith asked.
“Yes, he did. He made a complete confession,” Sergeant Ackley snorted. “He and Mainwaring’s nurse had been corresponding. She wrote him a letter mentioning the emeralds and their plan for smuggling them in by making a monkey swallow them. Of course, she denies all that, but we know Deekin’s right about it. You trapped Deekin into taking two emeralds out of their place of concealment in the car he was driving, and putting them into that cane.”
“Indeed, I did nothing of the sort,” Lester Leith said. “I had no idea there were any emeralds in the cane.”
“Don’t hand me a line like that,” Sergeant Ackley told him. “You figured it all out.”
“And what did the chauffeur do with the emeralds?” Leith asked.
“Put them into the hollowed-out place in the cane he was carrying.”
“Then you must have found them in the cane, sergeant! Congratulations on an excellent piece of detective work! The newspapers will give you a big hand over this.”
“Those emeralds in the cane were imitations, and you know it,” Sergeant Ackley said.
“Tut, tut,” Lester Leith said sympathetically. “I’m so sorry, sergeant. I was hoping you’d been able to solve a case which would result in a great deal of newspaper credit, perhaps a promotion. But you can’t go to the newspapers with a lot of hullabaloo about getting two imitation emeralds. It’s too much like killing a caged canary with a ten-gauge shotgun, sergeant. They’d laugh at you. It’s anticlimactic. Now tell me, sergeant, in his confession, did the chauffeur state that the same two emeralds he had taken from the monkey’s stomach were in that cane?”
“Yes, he did, because he thought those were the two, but by some sleight-of-hand hocus-pocus you must have switched canes and got the cane which had the genuine emeralds.”
Lester Leith smiled. “Really, sergeant, at times you’re exceedingly credulous, and opinionated, and careless with your accusations. If the chauffeur swears that the emeralds he took from the monkey’s stomach were the ones which were concealed in that cane, then they must be the ones; and if there’s anything wrong with those emeralds, any question as to their genuineness or authenticity, it must have been the monkey who made the substitution. Monkeys are quite apt to do that, sergeant. They’re very mischievous.”
“And, incidentally, sergeant, I’d be very, very careful, if I were you, about making an accusation against a reputable citizen based entirely upon the word of a self-confessed crook, on the one hand, and an assumption of yours, on the other. There’s really nothing to connect them up. As I see it, sergeant, you simply cannot make a case against me unless you could find those genuine emeralds in my possession. Of course, I have only a layman’s knowledge of the law, but that would seem to me to be the rule. As I gather it, Mainwaring will swear he never had any emeralds. And certainly Mainwaring’s word will be more acceptable than that of his chauffeur, a self-confessed crook, according to your statement, sergeant. Of course, if there never were any emeralds stolen from Mainwaring, I could hardly be convicted of taking what had never been taken. At any rate, that’s the way I look at it. Larceny involves the taking of property. If you can’t show that there ever was any property, you can’t support a charge of larceny. That’s the way it appears to me, sergeant, although I’m just an amateur.”
“What do you think about it, Beaver? You know something of police matters; that is, you’re friendly with a young woman who is friendly with— But perhaps I shouldn’t mention that in front of the sergeant. He’s so zealous, he might resent any possible leak from headquarters.”
Sergeant Ackley stood in front of Leith, clenching and unclenching his hands.
“Leith,” he said, “you got by this time by the skin of your eyeteeth. I almost had you. If it weren’t for making myself appear so damned ridiculous if the facts ever became public, I’d throw you in right now and take a chance on convicting you.”
Lester Leith said: “Well, sergeant, don’t let your personal feelings stand between you and your duty. Personally, I think it would be an awful mistake for you to do anything like that. In the first place, you couldn’t convict me; and in the second place, it would put you yourself in a very ridiculous light. To think that with all the facilities which the police had at their command, they couldn’t solve a case so simple that a rank amateur by merely reading a newspaper clipping— No, no, sergeant, it would never do. They’d laugh you out of office.”
Sergeant Acklev nodded to the two men. “Come on,” he said; “let’s go. Beaver, step this way. I want a word with you.”
Sergeant Ackley led the undercover man into the soundproof closet where the telephone was kept.
“Beaver,” he said, “you’ve got to fix up a story to square yourself.”
“Great Scott, sergeant!” the undercover man exclaimed. “I can’t. He’s seen me working with you. He knows—”
“Now listen,” Sergeant Ackley interrupted. “We’ve spent a lot of money getting you planted on this job. With you here, we can keep track of what he’s doing. The very next time he tries anything, we’ll be certain to get him. But without you to keep us posted, he’ll laugh at us, flaunt his damned hijacking right in our faces, and get away with it. The man’s too diabolically clever to be caught by any ordinary methods.”